Cory Doctorow traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where he gave a talk called "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification".
Video of the talk hasn't been posted to YouTube, but Cory Doctorow posted "a lightly edited version of my speech crib".
The talk didn't give much in the way of solutions to enshittification, but it did elaborate well on Cory Doctorow's "theory on enshittification", if I may call it that (my term not his).
Basically, enshittification happens in N stages: 1. Platforms are good to users, 2: Platforms lock in users, then maltreat them in a way that is good to business customers, 3: platforms lock in business customers -- at this point, they can capture all the value for themselves.
How it is done is by "twiddling" -- changing how the algorithms behind the business operate. Everyone else is left in the dark, wondering why did this product sell and not that one, this video go viral and not that one, this post on social media get shared and not that one, etc.
For the "Why it is done", he changes the question to "Why now"? Because 4 things that used to "discipline" businesses are gone.
Those 4 things are: 1. Competition, 2: Regulation, and 3: The tech workforce. Eh, that's only 3. Did I somehow miss the 4th one?
Regarding 1: Competition, he says companies have been allowed to gobble up the competition, so today there is no competition.
Regarding 2: Regulation, he says the companies are now more powerful than the regulators, so the companies regulate the regulators.
Regarding 3: The tech workforce, "Eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year."
So now we are at a stage where tech companies can charge the most, deliver the least, all while sharing as little as possible with users, customers, suppliers, and workers.
At this point he urges tech workers to form unions, which seem to me is the only solution he proposed.
Have a read and tell me if I missed anything.
